


il faut oublier tout peut s'oublier

by language_escapes



Category: Inception (2010), St Trinian's (2007 2009)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:49:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forging is the act of forgetting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	il faut oublier tout peut s'oublier

**Author's Note:**

> This is possibly the strangest thing I have ever written. Unbeta'd, because I'm impatient.
> 
> Title from Brel's "Ne me quitte pas". Roughly translates as "Forget everything you must forget." Very roughly.

This story does not have a happy ending.

*  
Annabelle learned forging young.

She learned from a young man, a cocky, brash fellow who made her laugh even as he made her into people she wasn’t. She learned the mutability of the body from him.

She stole his best secrets.

Eames, she finds out years later, stole her form.

*  
In dream heist, true teams are rare.

They are thieves, after all, and a pack of thieves sticking together in one place tends to draw attention.

Dom and Mallorie Cobb, with their mysterious point man, Arthur, were a team. One that everyone whispered about.

Then Mal died.

*  
The team that Annabelle knows best is run by an extractor named Peaches.

It’s incongruous, really, and no one takes Peaches seriously until they meet her. Her bright smile conceals a will of steel.

In another lifetime, Annabelle thinks Peaches would have been an excellent forger.

*  
Annabelle knew Mal Cobb.

She may have loved her.

Once.

*  
There are many point men. Only three could be considered excellent.

Annabelle has the closest connection with Arthur, though they avoid speaking to one another whenever possible. He is quiet, thoughtful, serious, and irrevocably deadly. She admires his suits and his competence, but he drives her to distraction with his insistence on ridiculous little details. She and Eames chuckle about it; they do not need files upon files to know things. They need only look.

Taylor is part of Peaches’ team, and so she is obviously brilliant. If Arthur is the one she has the most connection with, Taylor is probably the one that Annabelle knows best, has worked with the most often. She knows Taylor best because she’s forged her, a few times, and she must know Taylor in order to slip into her skin. Still, she _knows_ Taylor, but she doesn’t really know her. She knows the feel of her, the shape of her, but not her.

Polly.

Well.

Polly is a story unto herself.

*  
Annabelle does not use her last name.

This is fairly common in the dream sharing community, of course. First names or last names only, in order to protect privacy. In order to protect lives.

Dom Cobb is one of the few people who uses both names, and Annabelle knows that Mal would have only used her first had she not married Dom. _Miles_ is a well known name in dream sharing.

As is Fritton.

If Stephen Miles is renowned for pioneering the field of dream sharing, then Camilla Fritton is equally renowned for pioneering the field of dream heist.

One does not wish to be a celebrity if one is a thief.

*  
Once upon a time, Annabelle met Mal Miles at a dream sharing conference. Annabelle’s credentials were forged; Mal’s were not.

They’d smiled at each other across the room.

That’s how it all began.

That’s how it all ended.

*  
Later, when she is no longer his student, after she has introduced him to Mal, after Eames has introduced Mal to Dom, Eames tells her she needs to watch out for one person in dream heist.

“Arthur?” she’d asked dryly, already aware of how deadly he was. Eames introduced Arthur to Mal specifically _because_ he was deadly.

He’d laughed. “No, love. Not my darling Arthur.”

She thinks that if Arthur heard him say that, he’d break Eames’ arm and make him retract that statement, but she plays along. “Cobb?”

“No.”

“Surely you don’t mean Mal.”

His smile was tinged with something she couldn’t name. “She’ll take dream sharing where it’s never gone before, but no. Have you ever heard of Chelsea Parker?”

*  
Chelsea Parker, unlike most dream thieves, uses both her names.

As well she might, because she’ll never get caught. She’s the best damned forger in the world.

After learning from Eames, she’d gone to find Chelsea.

She’d found Lila, Carrie, Jared, Dominique, Kyle, and Jessica before realizing they were all Chelsea, and that Chelsea could forge outside of dreams as well.

*  
Kelly Jones is Annabelle’s first mistake.

She is also her only regret.

*  
“I used the PASIV for the first time when I was nine,” Mal tells her. Her voice is wistful, and Annabelle doesn’t think she’s imagining the sadness there.

“I was eight,” Annabelle confesses. It’s the first time she’s told anyone that.

“A lifetime of dreaming,” Mal says, smiling and licking a line up Annabelle’s neck. She feels her toes curl. “It’s a wonder we know what reality is anymore.”

*  
If her auntie had introduced Annabelle to the concept of dream sharing, Mal could be credited for introducing her to the reality of it.

“Dreams,” she’d purred in Annabelle’s ear that fateful night, “are pure creation.”

*  
She meets Polly completely by accident and gets shot in the shoulder before she has a chance to say hello.

Later, inside a dream, their meeting doesn’t go much smoother.

*  
Chemists are much easier to come by, though few of them are actually competent enough to trust. Yusuf has a name, a reputation, but he also won’t go into the field except under extraordinary circumstances, and so he’s relatively useless as far as Annabelle is concerned.

Andrea is a brilliant chemist, but unorthodox, which makes her too unruly for Annabelle’s tastes. But she is Taylor’s wife, and Peaches’ personal chemist, and so she winds up working with her more often than not.

Given a choice, there are three chemists that Annabelle turns to over and over again.

Celia, who tests everything on herself first.

And Tania and Tara, a twin team, who never test anything at all.

*  
Mal was beautiful.

She was beautiful, and complex, and even before going too deep, slightly insane.

She’d held Annabelle’s hand and asked her, _Have you tried this? And this? And this?_

And when the answer was no, they’d go under and try it together.

*  
Annabelle hates Dom Cobb.

She always has.

She always will.

*  
She considers Eames to be a friend, inasmuch as they have friends in dream heist. He taught her forging, and he introduced her to others who helped make her a name in the community. She trusts him, in a way. He’s not as unscrupulous as other thieves. He’ll protect himself first, but he has his own particular brand of loyalty.

He’s the one who introduces Mal to Dom. She never really forgives him for that.

*  
Polly shot her in the shoulder because she was aiming a gun at Kelly Jones, possibly the most infamous and dangerous extractor in the world.

In retrospect, she wonders if Polly didn’t kill her as a favor to Kelly.

*  
When Mal died-

When Mal-

When she fell-

*  
This story does not have a happy ending.

*  
(So few do.)

*  
She doesn’t know who Kelly is when she sleeps with her.

No, no, she knows her name. She is not so reckless as to sleep with a total stranger. But to realize that the Kelly who is holding her down and biting her neck is the same Kelly who has broken into various monarch’s brains?

That’s different.

*  
Architects are strange.

Chloe is almost vapid, wide-eyed with wonder at everything, and so sickeningly sweet that, while Annabelle respects and admires her, she can’t spend more than a week in her company before wanting to off herself.

Anoushka curses, spits, drinks, and builds marvelous creations; it’s a shock to know that such beauty can come from such a filthy package. She makes Annabelle’s skin itch.

Ariadne is new, naïve, learning. She pushes too hard, too fast. She’ll burn out, if she isn’t careful.

Annabelle has heard they go drinking together at least once a month.

*  
“You could be a forger,” Mal whispers in her mouth, hand sliding underneath her skirt.

“Are you saying I don’t know myself?”

“I am saying that you know others better.”

*  
Annabelle is Phillipa’s godmother.

Arthur is her godfather.

They rarely speak.

*  
She figured out who Kelly was when she woke up after their tryst to find fresh needle marks in her arm.

On the mirror, written in lipstick, she’d written, _Thank you for the information on the Keller job. Ta!_

She’d never wanted to kill someone more.

*  
“Let me tell you a story,” Mal says.

*  
There is a common perception that in order to forge, you must not know yourself particularly well.

In fact, the opposite is true.

*  
Peaches is regretful that she doesn’t have room for Annabelle on her team.

“I already have a forger, you see, and Chelsea is the best. I can’t see taking on someone else,” she says, touching Annabelle’s knee and sighing.

Annabelle shrugs. She’s not really looking for a team anyway. “That’s all right, Peaches.”

“If you had some other skills, then maybe…”

Annabelle nearly says, _I was Mal Miles’ lover. Does that count?_ But she supposes loving the most well-known tragedy in dream sharing isn’t really a marketable skill.

Besides, she would never use Mal in that way.

*  
“Polly,” Annabelle says, immediately backing away from the vault.

“I see you know my name now,” Polly says, still aiming the gun at Annabelle’s head.

“You didn’t really give me a chance to inquire last time, what with shooting me and all.”

In another lifetime, Polly might have smiled at that. In another lifetime, Annabelle will know that Polly wanted to. But now what she knows is that Polly wants what is in that vault, and she doesn’t have any problem kicking Annabelle out of the dream to get it.

She wakes up gasping and tied to the chair.

*  
Forging is the act of telling the truth.

*  
“Annabelle, this is Dominic Cobb. Dominic, this is my dear friend Annabelle,” Mal says, introducing the blonde man with a gracious smile. He squints at her for a moment, and then holds out a hand.

“A pleasure,” he says. American. Annabelle feels herself slipping into his shape, her mouth mimicking the sound of his vowels as she replies, “I’m sure.”

*  
Annabelle is mostly alone.

She finds that she regrets this less and less each year.

*  
“Mal Miles.”

“Annabelle. Fritton. Annabelle Fritton.”

“Well, look at that. Two celebrities in the same room, and no one knows. Share a dream with me?”

*  
After the disaster of Kelly, Annabelle considers going underground for a while, at least until the people from the Keller job stop looking for her.

Instead, she joins increasingly dangerous jobs. She spirals. She wonders what would happen if she crashes.

Peaches finds her first. “I have a job for you.”

“I’m not taking jobs right now,” Annabelle says. Lies.

Peaches smile is sharp and predatory, and this is why she’s one of the best. “I didn’t say you had a choice.”

*  
She runs into Polly two more times. Both times, she winds up dead.

Both times, she doesn’t see Kelly.

*  
“Let me tell you a story,” Mal says, and she’s smiling so beautifully that Annabelle can’t help but want to listen.

*  
Annabelle was introduced to dream share when she was eight. Aunt Camilla had very little concern about age or maturity. She wanted a family dynasty.

Her mother was long dead. Her father was a criminal outside of dream share already, and didn’t care what his daughter did.

Aunt Camilla showed her Singapore, showed her ancient Egypt, dreamed up the universe for Annabelle to touch.

Annabelle was hooked on dream share when she was eight.

She never could get herself free.

*  
“I love you,” Mal said once.

Annabelle never said it at all.

*  
“I have a job for you,” Peaches says, “I never said you had a choice,” Peaches says, and so Annabelle becomes involved with the third successful inception in the history of dream share.

(Yes, she knew about Mal.)

(She knew about Mal before anyone else.)

*  
The next time she sees Kelly, it is in a dream again.

“Oh,” Kelly says, smirking. “It’s you.”

Polly is standing behind her, silent and armed as usual. Annabelle can count on two hands the number of words Polly has ever said to her.

Kelly looks beautiful, her eyes dark and her smile coy, and Annabelle can feel herself start to lean towards her before she catches herself.

She was never anything more than a job.

*  
(They have the same smile. Mal and Kelly.)

*  
“Oh, darling,” Aunt Camilla says, sitting in her wheelchair, her smile old and weary. “Oh, my darling girl.”

Annabelle shifts into her Aunt Camilla, without the wheelchair, and her Aunt Camilla shakes her head.

“I knew you would do more than I ever could.”

*  
Her team is Peaches, Taylor, Andrea, Chelsea and Chloe.

Annabelle is pretty sure they’re the first ever all-female team, and she wants to turn to the world and scream at them, scream that they’re just as good as _Dom fucking Cobb’s_ team, better even, because they won’t wind up in Limbo, not a single one of them.

(She and Arthur almost never speak, but when they do…)

*  
“Oh, it’s you,” Kelly says, smiling.

And all Annabelle wants to do is kiss that smile away.

*  
Arthur is Phillipa’s godfather not because he is Dom’s best friend, though he is. He is her godfather because he was Mal’s best friend aside from Annabelle, which makes their not speaking even more painful.

“Can’t you just forgive each other?” Phillipa asks one year. “Please. For me.”

It’s her only birthday wish, and Annabelle can’t give it.

*  
“Fuck me,” Mal whispers in her ear.

Annabelle does.

*  
Their mark is a ranking government official.

Their client is a business executive.

*  
Once upon a time-

Once upon a time Annabelle was in love.

Once upon a time, Annabelle got her heart broken.

*  
“Oh, it’s you,” Kelly says. She smirks. Polly watches her with lidded eyes, hand on her gun.

“It’s me,” Annabelle agrees.

“You look good.”

“I’m a forger,” Annabelle says flatly. “Of course I look good.”

*  
“You love her, don’t you?” Eames asks her once.

Annabelle doesn’t answer.

She can’t.

*  
“Let me tell you a story,” Mal says. “Once upon a time-”

*  
The job is beyond anything Annabelle has ever considered. She is a criminal, and she can accept this, but there are some crimes that are too heinous to contemplate.

“We weren’t hired to consider ethics,” Peaches tells her. “Though I agree.”

“Let’s just do the job,” Chloe says, and starts to build.

*  
Mal is a beautiful woman. But it isn’t her beauty that makes her attractive to Annabelle. It’s her mind, her creativity and intelligence, her passion. Her drive.

She doubts that Dom sees all that.

*  
“This is my totem,” Mal says, and shows her a tiny top, small and silver and spinning.

Annabelle laughs and pulls her close, kissing the very tip of her nose. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for us to be trying to keep track of what’s real?”

*  
“You’re Chelsea Parker,” says Annabelle, staring at the gorgeous blonde in front of her. This woman has never hid her appearance, but she has been a thousand different people.

“I am,” says Chelsea, smiling. “And you’re Annabelle.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, the skyscrapers tilting around them.

*  
Kelly’s kisses are hard and demanding.

She leaves bruises.

Annabelle catches herself pressing down on them when she’s lonely.

*  
“Mal, this is Dominic Cobb,” Eames says.

And that’s the beginning of the end.

*  
They are hired to inspire revolution in the mind of the government official. And it isn’t a corrupt, awful government. The leaders are actually decent people, doing the best they can.

The businessman owns the weapon industry.

Peaches hates every moment of it, but it’s Annabelle who finally puts her foot down and says, “No.”

*  
“Oh, it’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“You look good.”

“I’m a forger. Of course I look good.”

“Did you want something?”

“Yes.”

*  
Taylor is spoken of often in dream share. She’s social, when she isn’t killing projections and blowing your brains out.

Arthur is whispered about, a phantom, terrifying in his accuracy and deadliness.

Polly is never mentioned at all. She isn’t a phantom, she’s a ghost.

*  
Annabelle is blonde in real life.

She’s brunette in her dreams.

She never tries to examine why.

*  
“I love you,” Mal says, and Annabelle says nothing.

Two weeks later, Mal says, “I can’t do this anymore.”

*  
“Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time-”

*  
The trick.

Forging is a trick.

It is the trick of forgetting yourself.

Forgers are rare not because too few people can understand other people, but because too few people can remember themselves. Too few people can come back.

Annabelle and Eames are two of five sane forgers in the world.

She isn’t sure if that’s a compliment or a tragedy waiting to happen.

*  
After she explains what she wants, Kelly glances, only briefly, at Polly.

That’s when Annabelle knows she had no chance.

*  
She shakes Dom Cobb’s hand a little too hard.

“A pleasure,” she says, and she’s staring at Mal the entire time.

*  
She’s alone, working at her desk, when Polly appears in front of her. Her eyes are distant and cold, and Annabelle knows, as she always knows, that she could never forge this woman.

“She has only cheated on me once, did you know?” Polly asks. She manages to make it sound like a curiosity rather than an accusation.

Annabelle remembers Kelly’s kisses.

She remembers her smile best.

*  
Everything changes.

When Mal falls.

*  
“I was serious when I said you could be a forger. Have you considered it?” Mal asks her once, tracing numbers over her skin. Annabelle shivers, and buries her face in the pillow.

“I already forge,” Annabelle says, and she feels Mal brush a kiss against her shoulder blade.

“How did you learn?”

“His name is Eames.”

*  
Forging is the act of telling the truth.

Ultimately, Annabelle is a liar.

*  
Annabelle sometimes thinks that she, too, is an architect.

The architect of her own downfall.

The architect of all of their downfalls.

*  
Phillipa looks so much like Mal that it hurts, sometimes.

Sometimes, she thinks she can see a bit of herself there, too.

*  
“Oh, it’s you,” Kelly says.

“I need your help,” Annabelle eventually says. “We’re going to take down an empire.”

*  
She met Eames by accident.

She was introduced by her father.

Her father is, in so many ways, everything that has ever gone wrong in her life.

(Eames.)

(Everything falls apart because of Eames.)

*  
(It isn’t Eames’ fault.)

*  
Mal smiles at her.

Annabelle feels herself melt inside.

*  
Kelly smiles at her.

Annabelle feels herself fall apart inside.

*  
Inception has been achieved three times.

Once, in order to save a life. It ultimately failed.

Once, in order to annihilate the competition. It ultimately succeeded.

Once, in order to prevent devastation.

The jury is still out on that one.

*  
Mal says once, “You need to want it. Don’t you?”

Annabelle doesn’t tell her, _you can’t want anything at all_ , because she doesn’t share the secrets of forging.

She doesn’t tell her that she ceases to exist in the dream.

*  
The client wants the team to overthrow a government in order to start war, which will profit the businessman.

They turn around and decide to incept the businessman to give up his enterprises.

In some ways, it’s exactly like what Cobb’s team did.

In so many other ways, not at all alike.

*  
Mal kisses her for the last time the day of her wedding.

She wraps her hand around Annabelle’s wrist and pulls her close. She smoothes Annabelle’s hair and says, “You look beautiful,” and Annabelle returns the compliment. She is Maid of Honor. She is Maid of Sorrow.

She smoothes Annabelle’s hair, says, “You look beautiful,” and then closes her eyes. She closes her eyes and presses a slow, lingering kiss to Annabelle’s lips.

Then she says, “I’m sorry,” and pushes Annabelle to walk down the aisle.

*  
“I want to try forging,” Mal says. They are sitting in a restaurant. “Teach me.”

“No,” Annabelle says immediately.

When pressed, she’ll claim she’s a rubbish teacher. In truth, Mal already loses herself too easily. Annabelle isn’t sure she’d be able to come back.

*  
“You shouldn’t have come to Kelly,” Polly tells her, cleaning her gun.

Polly is meticulous in everything, and she rarely speaks. Annabelle looks at her blandly.

“I couldn’t have come to anyone else.”

Polly’s look is flat and deadly.

*  
Before Mal fell, Annabelle was cautious. She analyzed every job she took. She did research, talked to people, asked about the team, the mark, the client, everything.

After Mal-

Well.

*  
“Dreams are pure creation,” Mal told her. “A figment.”

Later, Annabelle wonders if Mal was the figment.

*  
“I love you.”

The world ends.

*  
Shades are not a common phenomenon in dream share. It only happens to those who are unstable, unbalanced, disturbed. People who were already a bit crazy experience shades. Most of the time, the shades are pleasant, memories come back to haunt them.

She goes under with Eames a year or two after Mal dies, only a few months after his team accomplishes inception.

“I see Dom isn’t the only one with a violent shade,” Eames tells her softly when they wake up.

She doesn’t ask how he knows about Dom’s shade.

(She already knows. She remembers the shaky phone call from Arthur.)

She just closes her eyes.

*  
“Dreams are pure creation,” Mal tells her. “A figment.”

Later, Annabelle doesn’t need to wonder if Mal is a figment.

She knows.

*  
“Did you even like me?” Annabelle asks Kelly one day, looking at photographs of the businessman’s dead wife.

Across the room, she can feel Kelly’s smirk.

*  
She can feel Polly watching her.

She knows Polly doesn’t like her. She knows Polly considers her a threat, not only to her relationship with Kelly, but also to Kelly in general. She wants to tell Polly that she has nothing to worry about.

Kelly never even thought about her that way.

*  
“Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a woman. A dreamer.”

*  
“I’m sorry,” Arthur tells her.

Annabelle doesn’t have the courage to tell him the same.

*  
Sometimes, Annabelle wonders what would have happened.

If she had told Mal that she loved her.

If Mal hadn’t gotten married.

Sometimes.

*  
“I’m sorry,” Arthur tells her, and she wants to say, _so am I_.

Instead, she says, “I know.” And she absolves him.

They still can’t speak to each other often. There’s too much history there. Arthur was Mal’s best friend. He remembers how she took her coffee, her preferred brand of nylon. He remembers the way Mal sang in the shower, all off-key screeching and passionate love of music despite the tone-deafness. He remembers Mal’s deadly smile and her uproarious laughter.

Annabelle was her everything.

They look at each other, and they remember, and it’s too much.

*  
Outside of dreams, Annabelle does not forge. She is just Annabelle, outside of dreams.

Forging is the act of forgetting yourself, of giving yourself up. It is the ultimate sacrifice.

She looks at Chelsea and wonders how she does it.

*  
Forging is the act of forgetting and then remembering.

Annabelle cannot forget.

Nor can she remember.

*  
The team is Peaches, Chloe, Chelsea, Taylor and Andrea.

They bring in Kelly and Polly, because they’re insane, and they need an element of insanity, to make it work.

Peaches mentions bringing in Dom, but Annabelle threatens to walk.

*  
“You aren’t Annabelle,” Mal says dismissively, and it’s then Annabelle knows.

*  
There is a spot, a little hollow that is formed when Kelly twists her wrist just so. Annabelle had kissed her there until she’d gasped and arched beneath her.

She finds herself staring at it sometimes, wondering.

She can feel Polly watching her.

*  
(It’s her fault.)

*  
Arthur had called her, after his successful inception of that young business fellow. He’d called her and said, “Annabelle, talk to me.”

She talks to him, and keeps talking until he finally explains why his voice is wrecked, why he sounds like he’s falling apart.

As if she didn’t hate Dom Cobb enough-

*  
“Dammit,” Peaches says one day.

“We need more people,” Taylor agrees.

Annabelle knows who they want to call. She says instead, “Arthur and Eames. No Cobb.”

“But Cobb-”

“If you call in Cobb, I will leave and tell the world about what you’re trying to do.”

For Annabelle, Cobb is the final line in the sand.

*  
(She and Arthur rarely talk, _cannot_ talk, but she would walk the world for him.)

*  
She saw her first PASIV device when she was six. It was clunky then, large and unwieldy, and looked too much like one of the machines her mother was attached to when she died, and Annabelle had been afraid of it.

She thinks sometimes that she, too, will die like her mother, hooked into a foreign machine.

*  
The very concept of inception was something Mal came up with.

“Why can you not plant an idea, if you can take one?” Mal had asked.

“Because it’s wrong,” Annabelle said.

“We’re thieves, but we’re not immoral,” Arthur said dismissively.

“Some things are better left alone, beloved,” Eames said, and kissed Mal’s cheek.

Dom had looked introspective.

*  
(Funny, how the only one who never attempted inception is the one who came up with the idea.)

*  
She introduced Eames to Mal.

Who to blame, really?

*  
They decide not to bring in Arthur or Eames. They find work arounds. It requires Chelsea and Annabelle to become four, five, six people in short order, but Chelsea is the best. She becomes someone else, and then springs back to herself each time, a proud smile on her face.

And Annabelle-

She’s looking to get lost.

*  
(Mal was a brunette.)

*  
“I don’t like this,” Polly says flatly. She says it not to Peaches, but to Kelly.

“I think it’s exciting,” Kelly says, and she gives Polly a bright grin.

“Say no,” Polly says.

Kelly says yes.

*  
“Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a woman. A dreamer. And she fell in love with another woman, another dreamer.”

*  
The first person Annabelle ever forged was her aunt.

The first person she ever truly became was Mal.

*  
“I sometimes think that this is all a dream,” Mal says, kissing Annabelle, “and you are not really here. Because how could you be here?”

“You’re the dream,” Annabelle says, smiling.

*  
Forging is the act of truth telling. Annabelle is a liar, always has been. If she cannot lie convincingly, she says nothing at all.

She has told the truth precisely once.

It was the wrong thing to say.

*  
Chelsea has this unremarkable Asian woman that she forges whenever a generic woman is required, Annabelle finds. The woman is short, fat, snarky, and forgettable.

“Her name is Yvette,” Chelsea tells her once, her eyes wistful.

They’ve all left people behind.

None of them are forgettable.

*  
Her father introduced her to Eames, but she introduced Eames to Mal, who later introduced Dom to Mal, and really, who can say where the beginning of the end was?

*  
During the inception, when the world is crumbling around them, Annabelle sees Kelly reach out and grab Polly’s hand.

For a moment, all she can see is her and Mal, and tears blind her vision.

*  
“I love you,” Mal says, pressing a kiss to her fingertips.

Annabelle stares at her, and then kisses underneath Mal’s jaw. She can feel Mal sigh, but she doesn’t understand.

Not yet.

*  
At the funeral, Annabelle punches Dom.

Arthur pulls her off him, but she can feel the hesitation in his hands.

*  
“Tell me about my mother,” Phillipa commands, and Annabelle pauses.

 _Your mother was too much for this world_ is what she wants to say, but instead she settles for, “She was brilliant.”

But God, that is not enough.

*  
“You aren’t Annabelle,” Mal says dismissively, and Annabelle _knows_ …

*  
They escape intact. The businessman, the warmonger, wakes up and decides that rather than build weapons, he needs to build houses, and the government does not fall.

Annabelle-

*  
It is not that Dom stole Mal away from her, because that is not fair, and Annabelle strives to be fair when she isn’t being a thief.

It is not that Dom builds with Mal the life that Annabelle wants, the domesticity and the brilliance and the children, the willingness to sacrifice something other than ones’ self.

It’s that, in the end, Dom betrayed Mal. In a way that Annabelle never would.

*  
(She betrayed her first.)

*  
“Was I ever more than a mark to you?” Annabelle asks Kelly one day, when Polly isn’t sitting nearby with her gun.

Kelly looks at her. “No,” she says.

She looks up and to the left.

*  
Forging is the act of forgetting.

Too few people remember how to come back.

That is the forger’s true trick.

*  
Peaches holds her hand. “I know this must be hard for you,” she says.

Her smile is noticeably absent.

*  
Annabelle wonders, sometimes, if the reason she’s so good at forging is that she finds forgetting remarkably easy. Too easy, at times.

A little too easy.

*  
“You aren’t Annabelle,” Mal says dismissively, and Annabelle knows.

“He did it,” Annabelle whispers. “He actually did it.”

*  
“One must wonder,” Eames says over the phone, “if it really is possible to incept yourself.”

*  
In the end, it is not Dom who truly betrays Mal.

Oh, he convinces her the world isn’t real, that reality is merely a dream, and in that, he destroys her. He annihilates Mal, takes the core of her being and tears it to shreds.

But Annabelle knows, she knows too well, that it is she that orchestrated the downfall.

Her father introduced her to Eames. She introduced Eames to Mal. And it is Eames that introduces Dom to Mal.

It is Annabelle who does not say _I love you_.

It is Annabelle who finally does say it.

And that, in reality, is the final betrayal.

*  
Her shade of Mal is not the same type of violent as Dom’s.

Dom’s shade attacks the people around him, but leaves Dom intact. Eames tells her the stories Arthur has passed on, of broken bones and stabbings and gun shots, of torture most sublime. She remembers the one time Arthur called, his breathing wet over the static.

Annabelle’s shade only attacks her.

Annabelle knows who is to blame.

*  
“I don’t want to be your enemy,” Annabelle tells Polly, just once.

Polly’s smirk is small. “No one does.”

*  
“I know this must be hard for you,” Peaches says.

“Come back,” Peaches whispers.

*  
Once upon a time-

*  
“You are a remarkable woman,” Mal tells her when they first meet. “What is it like, being a Fritton?”

“What is it like being a Miles?” Annabelle shoots back.

Mal’s smile is mirthless. “I imagine they must be very similar, in the end.”

When talking about their family legacies, their smiles are identical.

*  
Once upon a time-

*  
Inside the dream, during inception, Mal appears.

She sees Kelly’s alarm, Peaches’ consternation. She feels Polly and Taylor take aim.

“Forget me,” Mal whispers.

*  
Forging is the act of forgetting and, later, the act of remembering.

It is doing the impossible.

Not once does Annabelle blink.

*  
In the end, the hero of the story returns to his family.

Dom has Phillipa and James.

What does Annabelle have, really?

*  
When Annabelle meets Mal, she knows it’s going to end badly.

This story does not have a happy ending.

*  
She holds Arthur’s hand during the funeral.

It’s only after that she punches Dom.

*  
It isn’t that she doesn’t love Mal.

God, she loves Mal. She loves every inch of Mal. She loves her passion, her courage, her curiosity. She loves the brain and the body. She loves the idiosyncrasies and the eccentricities.

It’s just-

It’s-

*  
“I think dream heist sounds more interesting,” Mal says one day. “And I am bored with this military contract. Show me more.”

*  
It’s that she’ll never be enough. It’s that Mal is _too_ brilliant, _too_ beautiful. It’s that Mal is going to change the shape of dream sharing, of dream heist, and it’s too much.

It’s that if Annabelle says it, she’ll mean it, and she can already feel her heart breaking.

So.

She says nothing at all.

*  
“Come back,” Kelly says.

Over her shoulder, she can see Polly, at least two guns on her person.

*  
She liked Kelly.

But she loved Mal.

*  
Can you incept yourself?

*  
“Forget me,” Mal whispers.

*  
“Once upon a time,” Mal says cheerfully, “there was a woman. A dreamer. And she fell in love with another woman, another dreamer. And they got married, and they had children, and they dreamed until the end of time, always together.”

“A beautiful story,” Annabelle says, running a finger down Mal’s nose.

“A true one,” she replies, catching Annabelle’s hand and pressing a kiss to her fingertips. “I love you.”

*  
“I mean, really,” Eames slurs over the phone, and Annabelle is holding her cell phone so tightly that she can feel the plastic creaking in her hand, “it’s almost as if Fischer incepted himself. Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know,” Annabelle says honestly.

“Did Mal ever talk about it? What do you think she would have said?”

“I don’t know,” Annabelle lies. In truth, she knows Mal would have said that _anything is possible. Let us try it._

*  
Annabelle has never said _I love you_ and meant it. Not to her father. Not even to her aunt, the only good person in her life.

She would have meant it, with Mal.

And Annabelle is a liar. So she says nothing.

*  
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, after the funeral is over.

“I know,” Annabelle replies.

“I should have stopped it,” he says, and he is a mess, a trainwreck, his neat hair disheveled, his suit sloppy.

Annabelle looks away.

*  
“You aren’t Annabelle,” Mal says, and Annabelle knows, there and then, that this is the end.

“I love you,” she confesses. Tells the truth.

Mal’s smile is watery. “And see, that is how I know you aren’t her.”

*  
“Forget me,” Mal whispers.

And so she does.

*  
Forging is the act of telling the truth, but it is also the act of forgetting.

Annabelle is a liar, but she is excellent at forgetting, and that is why she can forge.

*  
It is easy to blame Eames, for introducing Dom to Mal.

It is easy to blame her father, for introducing her to Eames.

And it is easy, oh so easy, to blame Dom, for betraying his wife, for destroying her mind.

But in truth, it is all Annabelle’s fault. It is she who did the introductions. It is she who could not say that she loved Mal. And it is she who said it at the one time where it was wrong.

It is she who confirmed for Mal that this is not reality.

It’s all a figment.

Just a dream.

*  
Forging is the act of forgetting.

The act of forgetting.

*  
Mal waits until the inception has taken root before she appears.

Polly and Taylor tense, ready to kill her. Annabelle had told them of her violent, destructive shade. Unlike Dom, she believes in communication.

But instead, Mal says, “Oh, my love,” and takes her hand. “Forget me.”

*  
This story-

*  
Annabelle doesn’t want to remember anymore.

*  
“Can you incept yourself?” Eames asked her once.

The answer is conclusive.

*  
-does not have-

*  
“Forget me,” Mal’s shade says, and Annabelle lets herself forget.

*  
Forging is the act of forgetting. It is a choice to remember, a choice that every forger consciously makes in order to come back.

Annabelle is the first forger to reject that choice.

*  
Once upon a time-

*  
“Come back,” Eames whispers.

Annabelle can’t.

*  
I love you.

Forget me.

They are one in the same.

*  
Once upon a time, there was a woman. A dreamer. And she fell in love with another woman, another dreamer. And the first woman betrayed the second by never telling her the truth, and the second woman died.

*  
Annabelle set out to incept someone else, and incepted herself instead.

She incepted herself to forget.

*  
When Annabelle opens her eyes, she isn’t Annabelle anymore. She isn’t anyone. She isn’t there.

*  
-does not have a happy-

*  
Forging is the act-

It is the act-

Forging is an act.

*  
“Come back,” Phillipa whispers, but there is no one there to hear her.

*  
Mal is known as the first person ever incepted.

Annabelle is known as the first person ever to incept herself.

*  
-a happy-

*  
The nurses talk about the occupant of 5A.

She is a woman, empty, and she sits alone in the assisted living house, staring out the window at nothing at all. That is all the nurses know. Sometimes, she tells them about her dreams.

She is a beautiful dreamer.

*  
When they whisper, Come back, all Annabelle will ever hear is, I love you.

They whisper, “Come back,” and Annabelle looks at them and smiles, her eyes empty, and says, “I love you, too.”

*  
-ending.


End file.
